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Legal hits

Recent ruling opens the door to court review of sporting fouls

By František Bouc
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
November 7th, 2007 issue

ČTK
Kladno's Dave Simpson suffered a concussion in a collision with Josef Kaufman Oct. 22, 2006. Kaufman was cleared of charges, but future fouls could come under court review.
At first sight, it seemed a scene common to soccer.
Four years ago, striker Milan Šimek jumped for a ball in the air, and defender Jiří Beneš did the same, to deflect the attack. The two men collided, hard.
The referee called Beneš’s tackle a foul and stopped the game, an amateur league match between Beneš’s Sokol Hoříněves and Šimek’s Sokol Třebeš. The injured Šimek was carried off the pitch.
While Šimek went to the hospital, where he began a series of medical treatments for a fractured calf bone and torn ankle ligaments, Beneš played on, the only penalty for his foul a yellow warning card.
Had Šimek not been a police detective, his injuries in the soccer match would now be long forgotten. However, well aware of his legal possibilities, Šimek decided to take the incident to a civil court.
Since that decision, Šimek and his lawyers have scored repeated victories in ever higher appeals of the case, with the most recent verdict handed down by the Czech Republic’s Supreme Court in August. The successive judgments have opened the door to hard fouls in sports being subject to review by the country’s civil courts.
While similar suits are common in some West European countries and in North America, where several brutal tackles in the National Hockey League have ended up at civil courts, the Supreme Court’s decision, now under appeal, represents an unprecedented verdict for the Czech Republic.
“Criminal responsibility [in sports games] cannot be excluded,” said the Supreme Court’s spokesman, Petr Knötig. “It’s necessary to evaluate case by case in order to determine whether the attacker should be penalized merely within the rules of the game or whether he should be taken to court.”
From now on, courts should consider whether tackles are appropriate to a game situation or whether they are exceedingly aggressive, said Supreme Court Judge Josef Hendrych.
The court’s verdict has sparked lively discussions in the country’s legal and sporting communities. Some athletic officials, including Sokol Hoříněves’ director Otakar Rejsek, insist that once athletes face the threat of courts eyeing their efforts on the playing field, competition will be fatally compromised.
“Players would be afraid of making any tackles, because they could end up in a courtroom,” he said.
That may be something athletes have to learn to live with, according to attorney Klára Veselá-Samková. The law cannot be selectively applied, even to athletes, she said.
“It’s not important whether someone injures another person while playing sports or while doing some other activity,” she said.
The recent court rulings have reversed the country’s conventional wisdom in the debate, which previously followed a judgment by State Attorney Arif Salichov, who in 2001 declared that “sports are governed by different rules” when commenting on the injury of hockey player Tomáš Zelenka. After being crashed against the boards in a second division ice hockey game in February 2001, Zelenka permanently lost control of his body from the waist down.
Similarly, investigators in the past have considered and then refrained from charging hockey player Vítězslav Škuta for injuring Roman Kaděra with a brutal foul committed in an Extraliga game.
Constitutional steps
While confirming that Beneš and other athletes could face legal action in response to hard fouls, the Supreme Court pressed no criminal charges or sanctions against Beneš. Judge Hendrych said that the court took into consideration that Beneš’s tackle was intentional but had not been intended to injure Šimek.
Still, Beneš faces the threat of paying hefty financial compensation to Šimek. The detective is seeking 250,000 Kč ($13,369) in compensation for the injury.
Meanwhile, a court in Hradec Králové, east Bohemia, ruled that Beneš had to pay a much lesser fine — 22,000 Kč — to Šimek’s health insurer in compensation for the cost of medical treatment. Beneš has appealed that verdict as well.
Both players refused to comment on the issue. Beneš’s attorney, Kamil Podroužek said, however, that he has filed an appeal to the Constitutional Court in order to avoid paying compensation to Šimek.
“After the most recent court verdicts, I’m not very optimistic about the appeal,” Podroužek told the daily Hospodářské noviny.

František Bouc can be reached at fbouc@praguepost.com


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